Posts Tagged by energy storage
Must Eco-friendliness Come at the Expense of the Economy?
| February 8, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
Here’s a wonderful article that gets at an issue I come across constantly: the implication that environmentalism and job growth are opposed to one another. Considering we have the option to put literally millions of people back to work in renewable energy, energy storage, electric transportation, smart-grid, etc., I’m always stunned when I hear politicians peddling the idea that eco-friendliness must come at the expense of the economy.
Related posts:
Electric Vehicles and CO2 Emission Abatement
| December 22, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Frequent commenter Glenn Doty writes:
What would really be nice is an infographic comparing the cost of mitigating CO2 with various alternatives… just to put the different alternatives into proper perspective.
For instance, how much more does it cost to abate CO2 emissions by setting up a rooftop solar panel in NJ as compared to installing additional insulation in an office building in Texas or setting up a wind farm in the Dakotas?
This would be extremely instructional to your readers in terms of what policies would make more sense… and it would be fun to look at how you graph the negative CO2 abatement value of EV’s.
I respond:
Ha! I was reading along here, wondering when you were going to make your point about EVs, and lo! (a good word for the season), there it was.
Seriously, please send me a high-level treatment of your reasoning.
At a minimum, there are two things I don’t get. Read More
Related posts:
Energy Storage, Pumped Hydro, and Synthetic Fuels
| November 18, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Here is a magnificent piece on energy storage: a perfect blend of the basic science and economics. It’s a very readable explanation of how and why storage will be required to integrate significant amounts of renewables on the grid.
Today, the vast majority of energy storage is accomplished with pumped hydro. The problems with this, however, are a) only certain (hilly) terrains are appropriate to implement this inexpensively, and b) the stored energy is not portable, i.e., it cannot be used in transportation, which accounts for 40% of our total energy needs.
This gives rise to chemical solutions, also discussed in the piece. Personally, I’m betting on Windfuels, a 2GreenEnergy client, which sports a remarkable breakthrough in synthetic fuels.
Related posts:
Zinc-air Batteries — The Breakthrough We’ve Been Awaiting?
| October 3, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Here’s a short interview in which I answer a few questions about zinc-air battery energy storage, a subject that’s been in front of the scientific and investment communities since the 1970s. Is this one the real deal?
Personally, I think so. There are a few unanswered questions, but I have a great deal of confidence in these people, based on my numerous meetings and phone conversations. Read More
Related posts:
China, Renewables, and Energy Storage
| September 19, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Here’s an excellent article that expands on what I wrote in my report on China and renewable energy.
I agree with a great deal of this, but the figures on the amount of energy and the amount of money are off by several orders of magnitude: ”A KPMG study expects that electricity consumption in China will rise to 6,400 TWh by 2020, up from 3,600 TWh in 2010. To meet that demand, approximately $2.8 billion in additional investment will be needed, says KPMG.” $2.8 billion won’t cover the cost of the cigars for the bureaucrats overseeing this effort.
In any case, there are some excellent observations made here.
Related posts:
A Few Perspectives on Energy Storage
| July 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
One of the things I enjoy most about shows like Storage Week, sitting through many dozens of presentations on energy storage, is the breadth of perspective on the subject of clean energy. We all know that ultimately, storage is 100% required if we are to achieve the high rates of penetration we’d all like to see. That, of course, is a function of intermittency – dealing with the fact that the sun shines only during the day, while the wind blows hardest at night, when the demand is at its lowest. (70% of the total wind energy in California happens at night.)
But here are a few additional ways of looking at storage. A great deal of attention in managing the electrical grid in any given region is placed on dealing with peak consumption on a daily basis – and especially with the few hours per year that represent the absolute highest peaks that occur during the summer’s hottest afternoons. But grid managers’ dealings with load fluctuations and resource availability are not occasional incidents. In one region of the country, the spreadsheet that lists the purchase of “ancillary services,” those that are necessary to provide the precise correct amount of power, has 850,000 rows (i.e., purchases) annually.
Thus, from one important perspective, energy storage solutions compete against gas-fired peaker plants, those facilities that can be ramped up and down very quickly to meet peak demand. How quickly? There are places in the US where weather conditions change dramatically and 900 MW of wind goes to 200 MW in half an hour. And wind is far more predictable than solar, where a cloud can form and blow over a solar field in a matter of minutes.
But another completely different way of looking at storage is finding a home for off-peak energy generation. As we put more wind into our grid mix, we get more off-peak wind – and thus more curtailment – the condition where wind turbines must be turned off because the power they produce cannot be accommodated. Curtailment costs wind developers huge sums of money; last year, it represented 5% of the total installed wind capacity.
Yet another viewpoint is demand response. Utilities pay their customers big bucks (in rate reductions) for the right to cut a certain percentage of power to those customers under peak load conditions.
So, storage provides a great number of different but important benefits. Yet at the end of the day, the gating factor for storage is essentially political and economic. Though there is enormous value to having storage on the grid, the question is: Who’s going to pay for it? In an environment like the one we have in the US, where there are different types of entities that generate, transmit, and distribute the power – each regulated differently, there is no one single entity that can rationally be expected to pay for a solution whose benefits do not accrue solely to that entity.
As one of the speakers here just told me when I confessed how difficult the business issues in this area are so hard for me to grasp, “The politics behind all this is byzantine. It’s not terrible in Texas, but in places like California, it’s a total mess. Powerful interests have succeeded in pushing through legislation, and they derived great benefit, but left the state with a set of regulations that make no sense whatsoever. Don’t feel bad if you’re having trouble understanding this. It took me years to figure it out.”
OK, I feel a bit better. But it sure is a shame that our health and safety — not to mention economical well-being — is being manipulated by a few greedy pigs.
And not to sound pessimistic, but we really seem to be a million miles from straightening this out. In essense, you have huge business interests in the energy industry that have no incentive to move this in the right direction. Are we expecting them to do it anyway? Doesn’t sound too likely to me.
Related posts:
Energy Storage – News from the Infocast “Storage Week” Show
| July 12, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
There are elements of the energy business that I find monstrously complex – namely, everything but the technology. The political wranglings – the way the federal, regional, state, and local agencies work in conjunction with the utilities and the regulatory bodies – appear to be the ultimate rats’ nest.
Here’s a good example of how nutty this looks: the power utilities in the US remain uninterested in – and in some cases actively resistant to — electric vehicles. Is there anything not to like about EVs if you’re a utility? It means sales of off-peak power, of which there is a super abundance, and it means stable, long-term growth as electricity replaces oil. Isn’t that good? Maybe someone can explain this.
Of course, the incentives that utilities have are quite enigmatic. It’s said that the real core competency of utilities is the management of regulators. The game is finding clever ways to pass through your costs to the rate-payers. And that represents a nasty little element of the equation: utilities can pass through fuel costs, so getting rid of coal in favor of a resource in which the fuel is free (e.g., solar and wind) represents zero gain in profitability.
In fact, utilities couldn’t care less what fuel they use – or what technologies they’re mandated to use. As long as they can make 12% return on their invested cash, they’ll happily do anything they’re told. Want wave/tidal power in Kansas? No problem, let me charge my customers what it costs to get me 12% on that, and it’s a deal.
It’s one of those moments where I wish I were king of the world. I just think of how easy it would be to create a way to regulate utilities that would provide incentive to do the right thing. I’m available to function as king, btw, but so far I haven’t received the invitation to serve.
Related posts:
Energy Storage: Key Enabler for the Deployment of Renewables — A Lecture on Utility-Scale Batteries
| May 7, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
As a part of our recent discussion on energy storage, Larry Sobel wrote in, calling my attention to this fabulous lecture given by a brilliant and thoroughly entertaining chemistry professor at MIT, who calls upon his students to think differently and go against the grain with respect to developing solutions for grid-level energy storage. As the professor reminds us, storage is the key enabler for the deployment of renewables to make it to base load, as we need to address their intermittence.
The key point here in thinking differently is refusing to pay for attributes you don’t need, since cost is king here; batteries that were invested portable applications are not scaleable at cost; we cannot string together batteries that were invented for laptops, cell phones, or even electric vehicles. Cell phones need to be idiot proof, and to operate in a temperature range that is comfortable when held in one’s hand. Car batteries need to be crash-worthy.
But stationary batteries for utility scale storage need to have none of these characteristics. So what do you get when you throw away the attributes you don’t care about? I hope you’ll check out the lecture.
Related posts:
Energy Storage Vital To Attaining High Penetration for Renewables
| May 7, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Frequent commenter Frank Eggers is right as rain with his comments on my recent solar thermal piece in which he writes:
Superior (technology) would not solve the problem resulting from the fact that the sun is not always shining. …. Instead of concentrating only on the solar generation of electricity, 2GreenEnergy should also cover power storage systems without which solar power would remain impractical, (including) batteries, water pumped to a higher elevation, air compressed into underground caverns, flywheel storage, storing heat in tanks containing a mixture of KNO3 and NaNO3.
Thank you, Frank. While we try to cover storage technologies to some degree, there is no doubt that we could always do a better and more thorough job. And this subject will be increasingly important as the penetration of renewables grows over time. At under 2% (the current penetration rate), I really think it’s fairly meaningless. But yes, as we get into the teens and higher, it will be vital — and it’s never too early to start addressing the problem.
I believe you’ll be interested in this month’s free webinar, featuring Dr. David Doty, an extremely senior physicist whom I’ll be interviewing on this very subject. He has a unique approach and capability in synthetic (liquid) fuels that I find compelling. I hope you’ll agree.
Related posts:
Interesting Presentations at the Summit on Energy Efficiency
| April 28, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
I spent a few happy hours at the Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency over the last couple of days. Most (though not all) of the presentations were really good, and totally relevant to the audience.
I was really pleasantly surprised, because I’ve noticed that sometimes speakers have one PowerPoint deck, and make the same talk, regardless of the audience. None of us could believe that the lady presenting from the Office of Naval Research would spend 15 minutes on a slide, taking us through the names and ranks of dozens of people we couldn’t have cared less about.
Also, I’m amused at the way some speakers present ideas that leave the audience with gaping, obvious questions. Here’s a good example. The spokesperson from Southern California Edison, whose talk was otherwise excellent, talked about an energy storage project that her organization has underway in the Tehachapi Mountains, northeast of Los Angeles. It’s a whole bunch of lithium-ion battery packs that can provide 8 megawatts for 4 hours.
At the conclusion of her talk, I approached her, and we the following dialogue:
Craig: I’m amazed every time I hear about lithium-ion – or any other battery chemistry – proposed for utility-scale storage. If we’re struggling with the price of a 30 kilowatt-hour pack for an EV, is there really any trajectory for what you folks would need?
Linda: It sure would be expensive, wouldn’t it?
Craig: To be sure. Well given that, why build this 32 megawatt-hour project, which is obviously a drop in the bucket?
Linda: To be honest, I’m not sure.
Craig: Hmmm. Though I’ve heard good arguments for other ideas, to me, pumped hydro seems to be the only good storage technology — and especially if you’re in the mountains anyway, with the natural changes in elevation.
Linda: Yes, you’re probably right.
Craig: OK, thanks very much. Good presentation!
Linda: Thanks!
See? Nice, cordial conversation, but one that left me wondering what’s going on there. It’s a strange world sometimes.
